


Book's Story

by Geonn



Series: The Bookkeeper's Archive [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode: s02e13 Doomsday, Episode: s04e06 The Doctor's Daughter, Episode: s04e08 Silence in the Library, Episode: s04e09 Forest of the Dead, Episode: s04e13 Journey's End, Episode: s06e01 The Impossible Astronaut, Episode: s06e13 The Wedding of River Song, F/F, F/M, Female Character of Color, Historical Inaccuracy, M/M, Major Original Character(s), Male Character of Color, Memoir, Original Character(s), Original Character-centric, POV Original Character, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-04
Updated: 2012-09-05
Packaged: 2017-11-13 14:04:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/504293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Geonn/pseuds/Geonn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Library contains a copy of every book ever written. Gathering them was the Bookkeeper's job.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First Edition

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by Neil Gaiman posting eleven facts about the Corsair on Tumblr. It made me want to write fic about the unseen and ill-fated Time Lord. But then I thought if it was fun taking someone else's list, how much more fun would it be to make my own list? As a result, the Bookkeeper was born.

I don't remember which came first, the ability to read faster than even the most adept Time Lord, or my love of reading. Did I teach myself to read quickly in order to cover more ground, or did I cover more ground simply because I could? Chicken. Egg. Doesn't really matter in the end. The point is that books were my life, my reason for being. So I called myself the Bookkeeper, or Book for short. Pleasure to make your acquaintance.

I was still in my first regeneration when I came across the Library. It was my Heaven, my Valhalla, all those marvelous words that people invent to mean 'that place where I'm completely me.' I found the Head Librarian to... well, to fawn a bit over how amazing the world was, and discovered the goal of chronicling every book ever written had hit a bit of a snag. How could it not? Quite an undertaking, even for someone with a TARDIS, but the idea of being paid to hunt down rare volumes was the purpose I had been awaiting my entire brief life. 

I realized that I was in a unique position to help out and offered my services. I called myself a "Lady of Time." A bit pretentious, I understand, but it sounded less stuffy than Time Lady and more accurate than Time Lord. I was just a strip of a thing, tall and bony with large hands and a face almost too large for my head. I miss my freckles... I've never had freckles like that again, to my dismay. And that hair! Not quite red, not quite blonde, but like a waterfall set aflame. I negotiated a price for my services and set out with a list of books the Head Librarian required.

I was young and impetuous then. Only ninety when I first snuck into a collector's library and made off with a rare first printing of Iseanen's _Woeful Days_. Sometimes I bought the books off the Head Librarian's list, but more often than not buying just wasn't an option. I would approach as a scholar, in my comfortable cloche hat and wire-rimmed glasses, tugging at the cuffs of my sweater sleeves with my fingers as I incrementally raised the price until the collector finally showed me out empty handed.

I soon discovered that books were odd treasures. Some people treated books with utter reverence, created words like "invaluable" and "priceless" to describe them. Ink on papyrus, vellum, or paper bound in leather turned into something magical due to how the words were arranged. There were bookplates and ornate paintings that accentuated the text and changed them from something interesting to something unique. Some people built museums around a certain book set open under glass. Other people used books to prop up uneven tables.

I did well for a few years, I'm not too modest to admit it. There was a certain amount of joy in tracking a book's progress back through the years, discovering where it had been lost and snatching it up from near destruction. A copy of Ceanim Hyte's _Wei_ was singed because the church I liberated it from was sort of a little on fire when I took it. The Shala Diaries were kept under lock and key by a government terrified of their secrets being revealed. I negotiated a pittance, assuring the Supreme Minister that it would be much safer on an entirely different planet than locked in a safe that anyone could break into.

I had fun. Occasionally I used the Head Librarian's money to hire clerks to travel with me and aid in my heists-slash-negotiations. When they decided to leave my employ, I fiddled with their planet's records just enough to give them a dear old Aunt Florence who died and left an inheritance or perhaps a small lottery win that would explain where their sudden windfall had come from. My most lucrative clerk, Leatai, was returned home five minutes after she left, having earned the equivalent of five million dollars on her walk around the block. Not bad for an afternoon stroll.

My TARDIS was generally disguised as some sort of shop in a row of nearly-identical shops. People passed by the unwashed windows, maybe pausing to peer into the dimly-lit interior or examine the old books propped up in the displays. Usually people just passed on by without a second thought, but occasionally someone would come in and browse for a while. I didn't mind; the console was disguised by a tall support beam in the middle of the room. There was a seating area, a tea service, and shelves upon shelves of books. Some of them were even for sale. When you're as good at acquisitions as I am, sometimes you acquire duplicates.

My first death came from a combination of laziness and cockiness. I extended an offer to buy a certain folio of Idendica's tragedies, but the owner was firm. That night I slipped into the collector's archives and attempted to take it off his hands. When my hand gripped the edge of the book, I felt as if a snake had latched onto my wrist. Venomous fangs hooked and held tight, then released. I clapped a hand over the wound, took the folio I had come for and a few others for the trouble and fled the premises.

By the time I returned to my TARDIS, I could barely stand upright. My legs seemed like they had been hijacked from another's body, forced to do my bidding but determined not to make it easy for me. My clerk at the time, Syd, found me lying facedown in the foyer of the "shop" and dragged me into the sitting room. She held my hand as I died, telling her about the process of regeneration and how she shouldn't be frightened. She asked if I was going to change very much, and I smiled.

"Darling, if I'm going to change... I'm going to _change_." 

The poison gripped me then, and I remember a feeling of immense coldness spreading out from my heart. It seized, and then I was awash in warmth. I was outside of myself for a moment, a being more light than solid, and when it faded I felt utterly and completely wrong. I was male, with a strong chin, and my dark hair fell into my eyes. I blinked several times before realizing I no longer needed my glasses, and I took them off and gently lay them aside as I examined myself. Hands. Dear God, feet... I took off my shoes and my feet seemed to swell and expand. 

"Look at these clodhoppers!" I exclaimed, my knobby toes curling and uncurling. Syd was awestruck. My shirt was now stretched to the breaking point, pulled high to reveal a large but flat stomach. I seemed to be in fantastic shape, but I was at least five inches and fifty pounds heavier than I had been when I dressed that morning. 

I stood, tugging at my clothes but only noticing a problem when I began to walk. "Oh, dear." I shifted my hips, rolled my shoulders, and moved my hands helplessly about. When Syd asked what was wrong, I smiled sheepishly. "Underwear. Not exactly accurate for this frame. We'll deal with that first."

It took some time, getting used to my new me. I learned to shave, and then learned whether I wanted to shave. My jaw was sharp and large, and it seemed a shame to hide it. But the right facial hair could accentuate it nicely. Eventually I settled on a small mustache that curled around the edges of my mouth. I kept the hair long since short hair just didn't feel right to me yet. I found a tuxedo in my TARDIS wardrobe... kept the pants and shirt, tossed the tie, cummerbund and jacket. I wore a beaten leather bomber jacket from Earth to complete the ensemble and, after an appropriate amount of time was spent getting acquainted with my new body (so many bits and bobs to treat nicely) I was back on mission.

Not that my entire life was dedicated to hunting down books for the Library. The universe is a big place, and there are infinite possibilities for getting into trouble. Even when you're a studious literati type who travels around in a bookshop. I soon discovered my second self was highly attractive to women, and soon found myself giving into their seductions. They seemed to have better idea of what to do with my body than I did, so I let them teach me. Oh, how they taught me. 

The money kept coming in, sent to a special trust that could be accessed directly from my TARDIS console. Every now and then I would gather all the books I'd found in a parcel and drop them off for the Head Librarian to catalogue and shelve. One of my clerks, a gadabout named Shaeran, asked what would happen if I failed to find a book. I assured him it had never happened before. He then asked why I didn't just pop ahead into the future, get the book I needed from the eventual-version of the Library, and take it back in time to when I was asked for it. I told him it was more fun doing it my way.

It was a peaceful life, interrupted by brief periods of heart-racing, adrenaline-fueled adventure. Storming castles to retrieve the last known copy of _Legacy_ by Pope Corimah, or gaining the confidence of a young widow so she would sign over her husband's library to me. Often I would create these deals and wind up acquiring nearly a thousand books just to get my hands on the one that interested me. I filled entire warehouses of my TARDIS with books that had been discarded. The filing system was comprehensible to no one, least of all me. My clerk Inyss came closest, but she could never explain what I had done so that I could understand it. 

I rarely interfered with the worlds I visited if it was at all possible. People wandered into my shop and I sold them a book or let them browse. Sometimes they came back, confounded by a book they had bought from me. It was English in the shop, but when they took it home it was in some other language (Latin... most people guessed Latin despite what the text actually looked like). I couldn't very well blame the TARDIS, so I blamed the lighting. "Terribly sorry" and "full refund" and "come back again soon," and they were out the door with the little bells ringing over their heads. I loved the little bells.

Oftentimes I came upon worlds in conflict. It became apparent that when people were engaged in war, they rarely bothered reading. There's some wisdom in that, I'm almost certain of it, but for my purposes, it meant no one was minding the till. I could walk in behind all the fighting and take the books when no one was looking. Any disappearances were attributed to looting and war spoils. 

My second incarnation died an inglorious death. Attempting to lift a copy of the Anearral Holy Book from the back of a cart, the horse unexpectedly spooked and took off like lightning. My attempt to remain upright caused my right hand to be caught in a loop of rope. I was hauled along behind the cart, dragging over the road like a dirty rug. I finally managed to get free and upright only to be plowed down by the cart of the constable pursuing the runaway. 

I died. I rebirthed. Again as a woman, and oh what a relief. My skin was dark this time around, and I carried extra weight in my bosom and hips. I'm told I maintained my masculine swagger for quite a few years, but I felt it appropriate. Number Three was brash and brazen, and cared nothing for negotiation. She took what she wanted and, if the owner was lucky, might leave behind a bit of coin as compensation for the loss. I was a ghost, an enigma, and I was only imprisoned once. To escape I seduced a guard, finding myself a little out of practice at being the receptive one during intercourse, but I soon remembered all the old steps. The poor smitten man gave me freedom and I escaped in a constable uniform so comfortable that I ended up wearing it (and similar varieties I had specially made) for nearly fifty years.

My third body was the first to be executed. Holy books. Why do people get so riled up over a book just because someone calls it holy? I touched one without permission, using hands that were unanointed, feminine, and dark. I'm not sure which constituted the heresy, but specifics didn't seem to matter when they pressed me against a stone wall. I'd run out of tricks. So I just smiled and winked at the executioners. I told them they were about to see something special.

It turned out to be a lie. I didn't die immediately, lingering on in near-death until I finally succumbed to my wounds. It was the poor man preparing my body for a heathen's burial that got the shock of his life. It was the first time I'd ever regenerated nude so I was able to give myself an immediate full-body appraisal. I was still dark-skinned, a little darker than I had been before. And male. No denying that. My entire body was a strange combination of muscular and scrawny, my head long and narrow. I was bald, a first, and I ran my hand over the smooth dome with admiration. Very nice. A time saver, to be certain. I stole a burial suit from a young man who definitely needed it less than I did and made haste for an exit. 

My TARDIS took me five hundred years later, when the religion was remembered only as a strange sect and the holy book I had been executed for touching was sold to me for three coins. 

The majority of worlds I visited had libraries of their own. Some massive, some miniscule, and treasures could be found in each one despite the size. I scoured stately shelves that required ladders on casters in order to reach the top shelves, and I crouched in front of slapdash white-washed shelves that were barely deep enough to accommodate the full-sized books lined up on them.

It was in my Fourth body that I had my first run-in with the Doctor. He was infamous among the other Time Lords, but I'd never given him much thought. Once in a while he seemed to pop up - funny scarf here, sprig of celery there - and cause headaches for the high council. He interfered with every planet he stepped on, and if you ask me, there's something a bit odd about the demographics of his traveling companions. If you're young, sexy, and female, you've got a good shot of getting onto his TARDIS. His _stolen_ TARDIS. He always seemed like a bad element, so I stayed away whenever I could.

Unfortunately, avoidance wasn't always an option. An incredibly rare book of Kaled poetry only existed in one place after the destruction of Skaro: on a shelf at the far back of the Doctor's library. I only managed to get aboard out of sheer luck and good dumb timing. I was tracking his Fifth regeneration when he appeared to crash into another phone box TARDIS. While they were conjoined - I could hear him arguing with himself in the outer room and could barely resist rolling my eyes in irritation - I snuck into the library and freed the Kaled poetry. I grabbed a few other books, too. Just in case I ever needed them. I managed to escape just before the two TARDISes were freed from each other. As I skipped off with my ill-gotten gains, I could swear I heard a foghorn and a tremendous crash. Probably just my imagination.


	2. Widows and Orphans

I met my fourth death because I was just too stubborn to give up. The last known reference to a book called _Unjjnsnhhsnjksknalaghgdbfgetsppd_ \- and yeah, try plugging that into a search engine. I kept getting results for _Uniinsnhsnjkslaghgoodbfgooetsppd_ , which is a travelogue and available on every planet with interstellar transportation - was before a nuclear blast on Juro's fourth outpost. I searched the damn place for days until finally, sick with radiation poisoning, I found it. I went back to the TARDIS, crawled into bed, and woke up in a new body.

My skin was tan-pink, and I was a woman again. I wasn't trying for the alternating sex aspect of my lives, but it was working out nicely. Long brown hair, extremely fit, and a face that brooked no argument. I spent the first month of my Fifth regeneration nude, simply wandering the corridors of the TARDIS and feeling that muscle or this curve. I designed a sports complex so that I could keep in shape. I discovered I loved the human games of soccer and skittles. The Veros game beckncall worked nearly every muscle of my upper body, and I had the feeling I would like my Fifth self.

Eventually I had to decide on an outfit. I chose a sleeveless tunic that kept my arms and most of my legs free, the long hem of it hanging low enough to obscure my shorts. I felt positively Amazonian, a warrior goddess with the mind of a scholar. And it was in this form that I first met Jenny. A blonde spitfire in fatigues, with a smile that promised all kinds of danger and excitement. We worked together to rescue a shipment of books from being burned in a backwards backwater and then spent the night reading to each other in my TARDIS. She fell asleep in my arms, and wondered if I was finally experiencing love. I didn't sleep at all that night, just watching her eyes dart behind her eyelids in dreams.

I woke her the next morning with a kiss, which she wasted no time in telling me was unwelcome. I apologized, she apologized, but she couldn't help the way she felt. We parted on good terms, and I found out what it was like to have a heart broken. Fortunately I had another. Commissions from the Library dwindled a bit during this period - they had found ways to acquire the text of books and were simply reprinting them in-house. Much easier and probably cheaper than getting actual copies of the books themselves. I hoped they had enough material; it was going to take an entire forest, and then some, to reprint every book in the history of the universe.

I had some time off. I traveled. Greece, on Earth, afforded me no shortage of female suitors. Is there a feminine equivalent to suitors? Dressors? No, that sounds horrible. The island of Lesbos introduced me to Sappho. Oh, Sappho. The songs she wrote, which I copied down and transferred to the Library. Later I discovered that only a bare fraction of what she wrote was ever found, so I felt pleased I'd gotten it directly from the source. The Head Librarian paid me a heavy stipend for "unearthing" the long lost treasures. 

I gained a reputation for being good at finding things. So as jobs for the Library tapered off, I got private commissions. Specific copies of books were requested, and I obliged. Theft and negotiations once again served me well. Private clients paid me far more than the Library had, and they paid expenses. My coffers overflowed. I bedded women and, for the occasional lark, a man. I made it clear to my more receptive clients that I could be bought with something other than money and they obliged. 

During this time of relaxation and reflection, I fell afoul of a Silurian trader named Tryckea. I may have raided her transport ship and stolen several (hundred) volumes intended for paying clients. She was not very pleased with me. I gave back what I didn't need, but she still insisted on vengeance. She was easy enough to avoid, however. When one has a time machine and your enemy does not, there is no shortage of hiding places. But sometimes I went back just to excite myself. It was fun to have an enemy and I think she felt the same way. We often fought each other to a tentative victory and then, whoops, we slipped out of each other's grasp. Darn the luck, see you next time, Tryckea!

It was entirely an accident when she killed me. There's no way she could have planned the power surge, or known where I would be standing when it happened. Electrocution sucks. It's as if every cell in your body is a radio, and they all switch to different stations at the same time. Static and cacophony and a lack of movement until you finally slump to the ground in a twitchy mess. I cried because _damn it_ I'd loved this body. I'd only been wearing it for two hundred years; I wasn't done with it. But I felt the change coming, and I closed my eyes and hoped my next self was equally attractive.

I didn't have time to give myself a full examination when I came to. My mind was still awash with oddball memories and a dislocation that came with regeneration. I wasn't sure who I was or what I was doing, but I knew I had to move fast. The ship was falling apart around me and I had to get back to my TARDIS before I met my sudden and final death in the vacuum of space. Tryckea had left me behind; she had no idea I could regenerate, so I couldn't fault her. My shorts and toga, so flattering on my Amazonian frame, draped and sagged around my new skinny male body. 

I made it back to the TARDIS with moments to spare. I left behind the wreck, made a note to come back sometime to let Tryckea know she hadn't won, and checked myself out. Big jaw, dark hair and dark eyes, a long nose... Floppy black hair. I rocked my head side to side and watched it flip against my forehead. I looked slightly like a jester, with a mischievous glint to my eye. I could work with that. I blew myself a kiss and undressed (oh, I could work with _that_ , too) and crawled into bed to sleep off my rebirth. 

That was when I started keeping notes. As the scrawny but scrappy jester, I had never felt further from that willowy ginger girl with the spectacles that I'd once been. I just wanted to remember who I had been in the past, so I would be sure not to forget. Hundreds of years passed, lives were there to be lived, and sometimes the things we want to hold onto the most are the ones that are easiest to lose. 

My striking and athletic Fifth self had enjoyed experiences with women, so it seemed only fair that my dashing but conniving Sixth body would explore what it was like to be with another male. I met my first lover in a bar, told him that I'd never been with a man (as a man) before. He promised to show me the ropes. And oh, oh, did he. After we were finished he asked for my name, and he seemed disappointed when I told him. "It's not you," he said. "It's just... from the clues, I was just hoping you were..." His voice trailed off and his smile became a little pained. "I was hoping you were an old friend in a new face."

I told him that next time I would be, and I sealed the promise with a kiss. I copied my look off his; a navy blue coat and suspenders under a dark blue pea coat. He looked better in it, but I decided now I looked less like a jester and more like a brigand. A much better class to resemble, all things considered. 

Jenny and I crossed paths again. I very nearly didn't tell her who I was, but she seemed to deduce it on her own. I relaxed as we talked, and she invited me to take part in a scheme she had going. Some Ood were being kept as household servants, and she simply wanted to give them the option of resigning their posts. We would have access to private residences which were, of course, my bread and butter. She could promise riches and, if I was lucky, maybe some books. I was game if just to spend time with her again.

We pulled it off with a few of her friends, freeing the Ood and holding off their owners long enough that they could get away. That night we celebrated with far too much liquor, and I escorted Jenny back to her ship to make sure she made it safely. She ran her hands over the lapels of my coat and said, "When you kissed me before, it wasn't about you. It was about me. And I'd never... with... before."

"Things are different now," I said, standing before her in the hatch of her ship. Our lips were nearly touching, but I wasn't going to be the one to bridge the distance this time.

"Not the important ones, though," she whispered. And then we were kissing, and then we were undressing, and then we were indisposed until dawn. I kissed her awake, remembering how it had felt to kiss her with feminine lips, and told her I was going to leave to avoid any awkward expulsion. We said our goodbyes and I left the ship, waving when I saw it take off later. 

It was a few months after Jenny when I met Doll. I caught her watching me in a marketplace, and she followed me into the book bazaar where I'd arranged to meet with a seller of rare and antique volumes. I did my business and slung the heavy bag over my shoulder, preparing to leave when I caught sight of her again. Her hair was black, skin pale, and she wore a blue gown that clung to her in all the right places. I took a few odd turns to determine she was, indeed, pursuing me, then waited behind a corner for her to appear.

She stepped out of the alley and looked both ways, and I spooked her when I spoke into her ear from behind. "What's the game?"

She spun and smiled in a way that was far too familiar. "Older or newer?" she said.

"Beg pardon?"

Her smile fell a little. "Oh. Older." She ran her eyes down my body and sighed. "A pity. We could have had such fun."

The way she said it, six little innocuous words, made certain portions of my anatomy pay attention. "No reason not to have fun."

She patted my cheek and winked. "Be patient, Book. I'll see you eventually." 

I watched her go, grieving the loss of that rear end as it walked away from me, and I carried my bounty back to my hotel. Later on in the evening, I was stripped down to my trousers with the suspenders running over my bare chest, cock rising from the opening of my zip, eyes closed as I tried to remember ever curve of the mysterious brunette's hindquarters. I was near an ending when there was a sudden sharp rapping on my door. I cursed and zipped up carefully - my first foray into manhood had resulted in a devil-may-care attitude toward zippers that nearly cost me my manhood - and went to the door.

Doll was waiting in a sleek black gown that, if possible, showed off her curves much better than the blue outfit from earlier in the day. She had one hand braced on the doorframe and the other resting on her thigh. Suggestively, I would say, but I would tend to think anything done to that thigh would be seductive. 

"You said it was all right."

"I what?"

She kissed me instead of elaborating, and I decided I didn't really care what she meant. I got her dress off, she removed my trousers, and I proceeded to fulfill the fantasy that had been so rudely interrupted by her knock. Afterward, spent and with the blood returning to my brain, I put the pieces together. I kissed her shoulder and one pink tit, taking it into my mouth before I looked up at her. "I know you, don't I." It wasn't a question, and she smiled sleepily at me.

"After that? I'd say we know each other very well."

"No, we know each other... later."

"Yes." She kissed my lips and stroked her hand down my back. "You're different, though. A very good different."

I didn't ask how; I didn't want to know.

Doll and I continued to meet occasionally over the next decade. I would leave her messages and she would always laugh in delight when I showed up on her stoop. She claimed to never know which of me was going to show up, but I don't think it mattered. As long as it was one of us, she was happy. I tried to remember the days and years when I was with her so I wouldn't accidentally run into myself. It seemed to work; if I did cross my own path, I didn't notice.

One hundred and five years later, I met Doll again. I was very young in my new form - petite, female and black, with a center-parted seat of black curls. I was on a self-imposed sabbatical from working for the Library to deal with a personal mystery: I had no idea how my Sixth self had died. I remember being very drunk, trying to pilot the TARDIS through an ion storm. I blacked out. When I woke, I was in prison wearing a new body. I seemed to have been jailed in my seventh incarnation, as no one mentioned a white male prisoner becoming a black woman during the incarceration. The TARDIS had no helpful records. All I had to go on was a small strip of blue cloth that had been in my pocket and a book with blank pages.

The constables asked for someone they could call to help me. My mind was muddied, and I gave them Doll's information. When she arrived and I saw confusion in her eyes, I realized my mistake. She wouldn't recognize me in this body, and I didn't want to try explaining it to her. I tried to send her away, but she was too kind. "You obviously need help. Something made you give them my information. Why don't you explain it someplace more comfortable?"

She took me to her home. I was already familiar with it, of course, but I gave her no indication of how. She let me borrow some of her clothes, including a red dress with a high collar that became my costume of choice. I bathed, I ate the dinner she made for me, and when it was time for bed, I impulsively kissed her. 

"You kiss me like you've done it before."

I smiled. I could feel thin lips curling up at the end, my small pointed chin rising as I pressed against her. "Want to see what else I've done before?"

Afterward, she stroked my hair and my body and she said, "I suppose you think me quite impulsive. I don't even know your name. And I can't explain it, but I just feel like I knew you."

"You do," I admitted. "I'm Book."

"What an unusual name."

In her arms, I realized my brain had been muddied by my regeneration. Doll should have been much older. I waited until she went to sleep before I slipped out of bed to confirm the date. I had not only lost a regeneration, I had literally lost _time_. For some reason I had traveled back before I'd even met Doll. She didn't know me yet and wouldn't know me for another year. I'd crossed my own timeline. _Fuck_. It was good for parlor games and cheap tricks, but generally avoided for the general fuckery it caused in the time-traveler's life. 

My mind swam with questions that I hadn't a clue how to start answering. Eventually I went back to bed and took my comfort with Doll's body. 

I discovered the answer to my mystery a few months later. Tryckea had discovered I was alive without me telling her (I swear I meant to let her know) and set a trap. My TARDIS had been caught in it, and I tried backpedaling to escape. I rode the wave back through my own timeline, knocked inside my little shop until a shelf tumbled down onto me. Massive brain trauma. I very nearly died, but my regeneration just needed a few extra days to successfully repair the damage done to my noggin and get all the memories replaced where they needed to be.

I was overjoyed I'd already started keeping a memoir; I'd hate to think of what might have gotten lost and never recovered. 

I expected it one day when I got a message from Doll. "I was thinking about how you said you can change your appearance. I think I ran into a different version of you. Younger, I think. He--"

"Do what you want." I felt a little thrill, smiling as I thought of the strangeness. I was giving my girlfriend permission to sleep with... me. "Enjoy yourself, sweets."

"Oh, I intend to. Anything you want to let me know to expect?"

"Where'd the fun be in that? Ta."

We carried on like that for a bit. Sure enough, I never crossed paths with ol' number Six. Once, however, I saw myself walking away on the street outside of Doll's house. I watched myself and my cocky stride, and I slipped inside before I could feel myself being observed. 

Doll and I parted ways before Doll and my Sixth version ended their romance. In retrospect, I knew exactly when things ended. She grew reticent and sad and then finally told me I shouldn't come around anymore. That's when I realized she had dumped me because I was going to one day dump her. Sometimes thinking about the logistics of that relationship make my head hurt.


	3. Book Burning

When I met Jenny again, I assured her I didn't expect our relationship to pick up where it had left off. She relaxed a little, but I could tell she was still wary. It was odd to see a person you had slept with as a different gender. It didn't affect our work, however, and we managed to succeed at our dual missions without a hitch. I made a comment that we seemed to still work well together, and she responded by kissing me. When she pulled back, working her bottom lip with her teeth, eyes wide in shock and confusion, I touched her cheek and said, "Thank you. But you didn't have to."

"But I can? If I want to?"

"Of course," I said. She kissed me again, and this time I let myself enjoy it. I let her undress me. I let her lay me down, and then I took over a little bit. She wanted me to; she needed to be shown what to do. I like to think I was a pretty good teacher. Later, after night but before morning, she dressed to leave. I knelt on the bed behind her, kissing her shoulder, whispering in her ear to make sure she was all right as I kneaded her tired muscles.

"I'm just fine," she whispered, then turned to kiss me. "Will I see you again?"

"Oh, almost definitely. The question is, what will I look like? And will you recognize me?"

She twisted one of my long, curly hairs around her finger and smiled. "I'd recognize you anywhere. And you better come find me, man or woman."

"It's a date," I promised her.

Seven weeks later I bled out in a cavern. I didn't die quickly. I didn't die brave. I killed the beast that ended my latest life and stared at its corpse as I felt my life seeping out of me. The pain was exquisite, sharp as a diamond that made my eyes hurt. I jerked and spasmed as my blood seeped out of me, and I kept looking back at the corpse. The book I'd been sent to retrieve lay next to me, covered with gore. For the first time, I didn't care if I made it back to the Library. What book could be worth this? Nearly a thousand years of my life, slipping into windows and skulking down corridors just so I could put a book on a shelf where someone, someday, might thumb through it?

"What a waste," I thought. They were my last words. 

When I opened my eyes, still in the ruins of my previous body's clothing and dried blood, I got to my feet and brushed the dirt off my dress. I was a man again. I rolled my shoulders - broad - and rubbed my chin - a beard; that was odd. I looked down at the book, the trophy I had died to get. I thought about leaving it, but a millennium of habit is hard to break. I stooped and picked it up. In the TARDIS, I bathed the blood from my skin and examined myself. I was ginger again, with a flat face, broad nose and widely-set eyes. I was handsome in a rugged sort of way.

I delivered the book to the Library and deliberately took an assignment I knew would take a good long time to complete. A mission to a restoration planet, where ancient texts were sent to have bindings repaired before they gave up the ghost. The system was entirely automated and, five hundred years earlier, it had broken (there was a rumor the Doctor was involved, but I didn't believe it; the Doctor was a gremlin and a boogieman, blamed for countless defaults and chaotic events for which he couldn't possibly be blamed). 

Somewhere deep in the bowels of this continent-sized construct were eighteen volumes of Colira's _Dialogues_ , the basis of civilization and government on ten different worlds. I looked forward to being trapped inside, breaking the scent of books and glue. I knew it would take me a while to find all eighteen of the books I'd gone in for; I was counting on it. I needed the time to clear my head and remember who I was. I did not expect it to take ten years, or what I would find when I finally left the vaults.

The Time Lords were gone. And so were the Daleks, and Gallifrey. Destroyed by the fucking Doctor. 

I wailed. I wept. I grieved with all the explosive energy I could muster. I went through the contents of my TARDIS bookstore and ripped pages from linings. Priceless books, what did they matter? Who cared anymore? I thought about Jenny, but couldn't bring myself to visit her. I considered going to Doll, but two versions of one me was enough to deal with. I couldn't impose a third on her. And now that I was thinking about it, I couldn't submit Jenny to a fourth me. They both deserved to move on with their lives. And I had to move on with mine.

The only thing I still had was the Library. I owed them a complete collection, and I was going to succeed. I finally found my feet and cleaned up the mess I had made. Still sniffling, occasionally leaning against the wall until I found my strength again, I delivered the eighteen books to the Library and set off on another mission.

My Eighth incarnation was the most productive of them all. I hired fifteen clerks over the course of a hundred and eight years. Together we recovered the entire Scoann bibliography from Delou VII, found the holy books of eighteen religions, found Shakespeare's lost final play (we staged a performance in the year 50090; it was terrible), and unearthed the first Sherlock Holmes story... which was written in the year 1765. Our job wasn't to solve the mystery, however, and I dutifully handed it over to the Library to file away in the proper bin.

I dread discussing my next demise. But I must.

I was traveling alone, thank Fate and Time. On a planet known as Whileaway, an entire civilization of illiterates somehow managed to produce a single book. The Library wanted it, of course, and I was sent to recover it. It was only after I arrived that I discovered the truth. Whileawaians weren't simply illiterate, literacy was highly regulated and restricted to the upper echelon. Only they were granted the privilege of reading, and the book I had been sent to find was a pamphlet to provoke an uprising. I was found in possession of it, and I inadvertently proved my literacy during their interrogation.

I was beaten. I was tortured. They made it last. 

I was finally dragged out of the cell where I'd spent God knew how long, tied to a pyre in the town square. I was given a kangaroo-court trial, but I passed out before the verdict was reached. Seemed like a forgone conclusion, anyway. As they lit the first kindling, I passed away from the injuries inflicted on me during my interrogation. I remember hearing the crowd scream, one of my jailers declaring that the "angels had come to save" me. I regenerated into a woman, my slender frame easily slipping free of the bindings, and I leapt through the flames to safety. I was burned badly on my hands, legs and throat. I felt my skin boiling as I ran through the crowd, the people who had come to watch me die parting like dirt before a plow.

I escaped to my TARDIS and fled the damn planet. I didn't get the pamphlet. I didn't get any of the books squirreled away in the ivory tower walls of the government. I didn't care about any literature conceived by the twisted and bizarre minds of Whileaway. The universe was better off without it.

Once I was safe, I took care of my wounds. I knew I could use the regenerative energy to heal them, but I erected a mental wall to keep that from happening. I wanted the scars. I wanted to remember the suffering and the brutality I'd faced. The welts and scars and broken bones I received in the Whileaway gaol were erased when I became this hard-eyed, steel-jawed brunette. I needed at least one reminder, something I could touch and see. The twisted flesh along my right side would ensure I'd remember at least until I became someone else in a fresh body.

I was in my Ninth life when I celebrated my millennial year. I tried to keep track of all the books I had squired to the Library but it was a fool's errand. Thousands of millions, probably. They had been stacked in the corridors of my TARDIS, piled in the control room, had been placed in towers that collapsed around me as I maneuvered the ship around a hostile vessel. How many more could I deliver? I was only promised thirteen lives, unless I decided to end them early. I was past middle age, and I wouldn't live to see 2,000 years. 

I'm not complaining. No one should live a millennium, not even a Lady of Time.

Born in flame, my Ninth self died in water. I didn't fight when it happened; I just wanted it to be over. I wanted to be someone else, wanted to move on. I couldn't do that as Nine. I treated her nicely for her last days. Sex, food, wine, dancing. She smiled, she laughed, she sometimes forgot about the memories etched into her skin. When the time came I walked into the sea of a beautiful world and let the waves cover my head.

When I woke on the beach, clothes sticking to my skin, I was a man. Large jaw. Blonde hair. Vaguely Neanderthal brow and an underbite. The face reflected in the water was handsome, but a bit brutish. I took off the clothes of my previous, dark persona and walked the beach in my underwear until I dried off, then I returned to the TARDIS and dressed in a suit. I went to the shore and lay a flower on the sand, waiting until the tide got high enough to drag it away.

It was my wake. My farewell. I whispered goodbye to my grieving, grievous self and went back to the TARDIS. I left my sorrow on the beach, but I kept that brooding woman alive in my heart. I feel her there now, holding back her tears, trying so hard not to think about the atrocities she suffered in a past life. Sometimes I fear she was cheated from a real life, although she lived for over one hundred years. So I keep her near the surface so she can get a taste of happiness whenever it's available. Sometimes I think I can feel her smiling.

With my Tenth life, I resumed my duties at the Library. On hundreds of thousands of worlds, millions of people were writing every day. The Library wanted it all. I came up with a solution to the "Earth" problem which had stymied the Head Librarian for centuries. In the year 2000, humans began posting their fictional writings on the Internet in astounding numbers. The Library wanted these stories when they were novel-length - fiction was fiction - but how to possibly grab them all? My Tenth self came up with the solution. I formed a computer program that would go live on January 1, 2000, and would capture every book posted over a certain word-count. The file would be bundled and, whenever my TARDIS came into range, it would be uploaded to a dedicated drive. Humans wouldn't even notice it running in the background, and I'd gather many, many impossible-to-retrieve books that would otherwise have been lost. Easy-peasy (God, my Tenth self said that a lot...).

The downside came when humans somehow discovered the existence through rumor, innuendo, and fear-mongering. The "Y2K bug" became demonized. It was quickly forgotten when the day came and went with no discernable effects but I still felt guilty for the panic I caused them. No one noticed when I bumped up the technology a little - as a _mea culpa_ \- and made widespread high-speed internet possible. Within ten years, dial-up was as archaic as a dinosaur. Hopefully that made up for the panic. Sorry again, Earth.

Ten pined for his Ninth self like she was a lost love. He considered her someone he had failed, although he'd had nothing to do with her demise. Sometimes I felt a bit dissociative with him, as if by committing suicide the Ninth version of me hadn't fully released her hold on the body. He allowed her to coexist with him, like a little sister all mangled up with a lover. When my Tenth self died in his sleep after two and a half centuries, I think they went peacefully into each other's arms. 

Eleven. Oh, Eleven, the joy and the pain. I'd gladly re-suffer the ache in my lower back to have that chest again for just one day. Busty and full-figured, voluptuous was the word. Skin as pale as any vamp, and hair so red it almost looked unnatural. Ginger, hourglass, pouty. I downplayed the vivaciousness with modest and understated suits, choosing a waistcoat over a starched white shirt rather than anything low-cut. But I just _had_ to show off those legs. My tight little skirt with a slit up the thigh became my uniform. And shoes, shoes, shoes. Even in my past female lives, I'd never had quite the shoe fetish ol' Miss Eleven carried on with herself.

I swear even my TARDIS engines hissed "va-va-va-voom" upon my arrivals.

But my Eleventh life was nearly as dark as my Ninth for two reasons: the damnable Doctor and the Vashta Nerada. Silence fell in the Library and the damn Doctor who made it his business to meddle, who interfered on every planet he set foot on, just stood by and allowed it to happen. He gave the Library over to them, surrendered over a thousand years of my life to alien beings. He'd saved the Ood. He fought against Satan himself, some say. And he was Earth's self-proclaimed sole protector. He had saved the damn humans at least 785 times.

And my life's work...

He let it burn.

I decided he had to pay, one way or another. With no Library, I had no purpose. Just a TARDIS full of rare books and a need to hold someone accountable. I couldn't fight shadows, so I decided the Doctor's time had come. He'd been running around unaccountable for far too long and I aimed to bring him to justice. So I began hunting for him, but I found someone else instead. 

Her name was River Song.


	4. Rivers of White

I didn't take my search for the Doctor lightly. An infamous member of an infamous race, the one who had destroyed (almost) all of the others... one had to tread lightly where he was involved. My Eleventh form was appropriate for the task; people underestimated someone with breasts as large as mine. My eyes were large enough to make me look innocent and helpless. I accentuated the impression by wearing a blouse with a frilled collar, unbuttoned low enough to give a hint of cleavage, under a black-and-purple velvet coat. 

People fell over themselves to help me. I was put on the track of rumor and innuendo, chasing down rumors. I even had an audience with the Queen of England... Elizabeth Ten, aboard the Starship UK. She had quite a few harrowing tales to share, and she pointed me in the right direction. It seemed she met the Doctor in his Eleventh incarnation as well. Seemed we were on a parallel course. Contemporaries, as it were.

I tracked him through the people whose lives he touched, for better or worse. Liz X, Peri Brown, Wilfred Mott, Tish Jones, Benny Summerfield, Elton Pope... the latter of which had a girlfriend who existed as a two-dimensional block of concrete. I was horrified the Doctor would leave someone in such a state but I was hardly surprised. She was alive, good enough for the ol' Doc. I went through my literature until I found the proper methods of reconstitution and gave sweet, meek Ursula her body back. 

I thought I'd hit pay dirt when I came across a rumor: in the Stormcage Containment Facility, there was a Very Important Prisoner serving time for killing the Doctor. I tracked her down but discovered she had a habit of escaping. So I sought for her the way I had once searched for wayward books. I tracked down rumor and innuendo, I listened to gossip and whispers, until finally I heard a date.

22 April, 2011. A place called Lake Silencio on Earth. I arrived early and parked at the very edge of my TARDIS scanner range. I gave up the usual disguise of a bookshop (because honestly, no one would expect to see one out in the middle of nowhere like this) in exchange for looking like a bizarre rock formation. On-screen, I followed the arrival of Amy Pond and Rory Williams, and then the Doctor himself in his ridiculous Stetson. 

River arrived and shot off the hat, and I felt my heart quicken. God, how I wanted to cheer! But then she was welcomed into the group. She broke bread with them. How was this possible? How could... but then! Aha! An Earth/American astronaut rose from the waters of the lake. I rose from my chair and leaned in toward the glass. This was... the Silence! Dear God. It was just their sort of bizarre plot. I did a quick bio scan of the suit and discovered that the River in the astronaut suit was, indeed, River Song. He invited River to observe her own victory? Unless he thought he could somehow avoid it. I narrowed my eyes and paid attention, ready to intervene should the Doctor try anything.

The Silence knew the Doctor would be here, in this moment, now, and they set up a mystery he would never run from. "An astronaut at the bottom of the lake! What an amazing thing!" He would approach it - as he was doing - and the astronaut would--

I cheered when the first blast rang out. My head swam a little, like a rubber band had been stretched and then snapped back into place. I shook my head to clear the cobwebs and watched as the astronaut fired again to interrupt the Doctor's regeneration. His former companions gathered the body and burned it. I waited until I was sure they were all gone, then went to the lake. I used my sonic probe to find his remains, any remnant from his pyre, and I found it. A tiny ash, barely more than a smudge on the dirt but enough.

I took it back to my TARDIS and scanned it. "Bloody bastard," I growled. "Serves you right. Killed by--" But no. No, not the Doctor. I should have known there would be a trick. The sample was biological all right, but not Time Lord.

It was a piece of the Teselecta. The plot was utterly Silence - no escape, no loophole - but the solution was so utterly, maddeningly _Doctor_. I pounded my fists against my console and had another horrifyingly childish tear about the shop. It was then that I understood River Song's presence at the assassination, her repeated escapes, her constant run-ins with the Doctor despite the fact she should have been his greatest enemy.

They _planned it_. I thought I was seeking a fellow fighter, but in reality I had been tracking an ally. I thought about it logically. The Silence used River Song to kill the Doctor, and the Doctor used her to fool them into thinking they had won. All I had to do was remove River from the equation sometime before the incident at Lake Silencio. 

I had to kill River Song before she could pretend to kill the Doctor. I'd force the Silence to make a new plan, one he couldn't so easily evade. 

I flirted and seduced my way into the Stormcage - it was the same way River managed her escapes, so I figured it was fair play to turn her tricks against her. I waited for one of her many absences to get into her cell and search it for something, anything, that would illuminate her history. I had to know where she'd come from to find the precise historic point to take her out. Time was too fragile to just go back to her birth and... well. I may have had my heart torn out, but only a monster could harm a baby.

I was midway through my search when the cell door slammed shut behind me. I spun to find River had locked herself inside the tiny space with me. She rested her hand on one vertical bar, lips slightly pouted out, and ran her eyes up and down my body. "Well. A body built for a criminal. I doubt any sketch artist has gotten a clear description of your _face_."

"Stand back, Dr. Song."

She lifted her hands. "Oh, I quite surrender. Sure you don't want to check me for weapons? I'm ever so good at hiding them."

God, how I wanted to just kill her then and there. But that wouldn't have done any good... she had already gone through with the ruse. We circled each other, our backs to the wall. River never lost her slight smirk, but I knew it was just a mask. She was watching me, noting weaknesses, picking up on physical cues. I was doing the same thing to her. 

"So who are you? One of the Doctor's past companions? You fit the type." Her eyes dropped to my cleavage again. "Heard about the big bad River Song and came to get vengeance for him? Well, I--"

"Shut up. The Doctor was supposed to die, but you... you _tricked them_. With the Teselecta. You should have let him die. You should have let him burn for what he did to me."

River's mask fell. "What did he do?" Her voice was soft, calming, and for a moment I saw the real her. Whoever she was, she had known pain. "Tell me."

I wanted to cling to my anger, but it shattered and shook as tears filled my eyes. "How many planets has he saved from destruction? How many thousands of people has he saved? How many times has he sacrificed himself to save a planet... especially Earth! And he let mine..." A sob broke free and the tears streamed down my cheeks. "He gave it away. He surrendered it to the invaders, and everything I'd worked toward was _lost_."

"Sometimes the Doctor can only do what he can--"

"Oh, save it." I growled at her. "He fooled the Silence, he ensured that he would die on the right day, but he's still walking around. He wins. He always, always wins. And when he had to fight for me world, he surrendered. _Why that fight?_ Why did he decide that was the war he wouldn't wage? Tell me. Please, just tell me."

"I don't know. What was your world?"

"The Library."

River thought for a moment and then shook her head. "I don't remember that one. I'm sorry. Maybe it hasn't happened for me yet. The Doctor and I, we seem to--"

I took advantage of her distraction and launched myself at her. She lifted an arm to block me, and I wrapped my arms around her. I tossed us down onto her bed, rising up enough to crack my fist across her jaw. Dazed, she grabbed the lapel of my coat to hold me off as I rained blows down on her. I couldn't kill her, but I could certainly do some damage. A klaxon began to sound in the corridor behind me and I heard guards approaching. 

The cell door opened, and I leaned down to whisper a final message to River. "Tell the Doctor he didn't kill all the Time Lords. He left one, and that one is going to _murder him_ for real." I was hauled off of her and pushed away. As I stumbled, I spotted a blue book that had fallen from River's skirt pocket. It was a small hardback with three rows of two squares on the cover. Centuries of habit took over, and I did what I always did when I saw a book I didn't recognize.

I stole it.

When the Stormcage hierarchy determined I was not a prisoner and technically had no reason to be in their prison, I was allowed to leave. I took my TARDIS to the edge of a supernova and let the eddying gravity buoy me about for a while. I quickly determined that the book I'd stolen from River was exactly what I had gone to her for: a history of her encounters with the Doctor. It was beautiful, golden, and I pored through it looking for just the right moment to swoop in and change what happened at Lake Silencio.

I read about Donna.

I read about Rose.

Astrid. Sarah Jane. Jack... my Jack Harkness! I ran my fingers over the ink that spelled out his name and continued reading. The Doctor's children of time, always leaving him. I thought to the clerks who had been in my employ and then left. I thought of them occasionally, but I never... I didn't... how could a Time Lord allow themselves to have such feelings for mortals? 

"Of course they leave us, you bloody fool," I whispered, wiping the tears from my eyes as I flipped through the pages. I ached for him. The man who called his clerks "companions," who traveled with them because he went a bit mad when he was alone. He loved them all. And he loved them despite knowing they would, one day, break both his hearts into pieces that could never be glued back together. But somehow he managed. He found replacements knowing full well it would start all over again.

"Poor man." The words slipped out, though I didn't regret them. I did pity him. I held the book to my chest and went to the door, opening it wide to watch the accretion disc form. Everything in the universe eventually crumbled and fell. Lives, loves, loss. They were forever pulled in the same swirling pattern. You couldn't have one without the other two. 

I'd lost the Library. I wept for it, grieving for all those books, but people had enjoyed them for centuries. The books had served their purpose, and I had served mine. Pursuing vengeance against the Doctor wouldn't do any good. I closed the doors and set the coordinates for the Stormcage. River was expecting me, obviously having noticed her book was missing, and I took her with me when I left.

We found a quiet hill on a quiet world, and I officially returned the book to her. She asked if I was all right, and I didn't have an answer for her. She kissed me, and I kissed her back, and we made love in soft grass. Afterward she held me and I kissed her breasts, my hands between her back and the ground as we watched clouds swirl overhead.

"So you know what's next, of course," River said softly.

I closed my eyes, my tears dripping down onto her skin. "Nothing."

"Wrong answer." I lifted my head and she curled a finger under my chin. She smiled and said, "When what you have is nothing, then what's next can be anything." She pressed her thumb to my lips and I kissed it. I thought about it and decided she was right. No Library meant I had no pressing reasons to go anywhere or do anything. I was free. I could do whatever I wanted now, and the whole of time and space was at my fingertips.

"Get dressed, Dr. Song." I pushed up and stood with my feet straddling her, hands on my hourglass hips with my chest thrust out. River put her hands under her head and admired the view. I looked down, backlit with a halo of light, and winked at her. "Care to take a tour?"

She ran her eyes down my body.

"Of the universe," I said, kicking her in the side.

"Oh. Well... for starters, I suppose. As an old friend used to say, _allons-y_!"


	5. Ephemera

I swam in the River, and the waters were cool and deep. I let River wash over me, and I sank into her. I felt happiness I hadn't felt since burning at the stake, revitalized with the universe laid out before me like a playpen. The books still existed. Just because they had nowhere to go didn't mean they should be forgotten. But now I didn't have to restrain myself. I didn't have to worry about whether the Library already had a copy, or if it was in acceptable condition. I was free to have and keep all the books I wanted.

River searched for erotica in all its forms, and sometimes she read it out loud to me. The rule was we had to keep our hands to ourselves until the story was done, but _God_ she made it hard. I squirmed and writhed and shot daggers at her with my eyes. More than once a book had been torn out of her hands only to be covered by discarded clothing a moment later.

I didn't fool myself. She was destined to be with the Doctor. But I was more than willing to share her for the short time we had together. Eventually she left me and didn't return. We had prepared for that eventuality, so I said a goodbye to her in the Stormcage cell where we had first met and continued on my way. 

My Eleventh took her cue from the Doctor; she died while saving others. At a book burning in a medieval village, the thatched roofs of nearby huts had caught sparks. I abandoned the books I'd been hauling away when I heard the screams of a family trapped by the flames. Facing my own paralyzing fear of the flickering fire, I raced inside and got them to safety. My mistake was going back for the books. I was overcome by the smoke and suffocated. I felt my regeneration beginning even as I passed out, and I hoped the air cleared before my Twelfth succumbed as well.

I survived, but I was laid up in a clinic for several days as the doctors (lower-case) tried to determine just where I had come from and what was wrong with me. I slipped away while they were debating what could possibly make an echo in my chest that sounded as if I had two hearts. I found my way back to my TARDIS and left them with the mystery.

What a dashing gent he was. Long dark hair, wedge-shaped eyes that tapered to points that then spread out in crow's-feet. And muttonchops! I decided I quite liked those and made a note to keep them. My wardrobe had an appropriately Victorian suit that went with my dapper new look, and I added a violet-and-black scarf which I could duck my chin into if I wanted to be incognito. I actually spent some time in the 1890s on Earth. I established my little shop and ran it as if I was an actual human being. I had regular customers, people who occasionally lifted their heads when the TARDIS wheezed but otherwise noticed nothing amiss about me or my shop.

I rediscovered my love for literature, acquiring books because I wanted to know the stories they held. Possession became a treasure of its own. A young man frequented my shop, sitting at the window and writing in a small booklet that he was always reluctant to let anyone read. I befriended him; he was a baker's son, but his true passion was storytelling. I supported him and was eventually allowed to read his first finished novel.

When I told him I loved it, he surprised me with a kiss. He apologized profusely, but I told him it was far from unwelcome. We made love in the small bedroom off the main body of the shop. Afterward, wrapped in a sheet like the toga I'd worn when I was Five, he described other story ideas he had. 

"And your shop."

"My shop?" I had been examining my chest. Flat, hairy, muscular, nothing to dislike about it. But I did so miss my lovely Eleven's bust. "What about my shop?"

He knocked his knuckles on the wall and smiled at me, the lantern casting him as a jack-o-lantern. "It's got a lot of space, doesn't it? I mean, by my reckoning, we should be in ol' Polly's music shop right now. But we ain't."

I settled back against the pillows and shrugged. "More than is thought of in your philosophy, Horatio."

"One day you'll tell me. Or I'll figure it out."

I shrugged and motioned him forward with my finger. "Come back to bed. I'll whisper all my secrets to you."

Tryckea found me in my little London abode, about three years before the century mark. Her face was wrapped in a scarf, a hood pulled down over her reptilian features as she aimed a flintlock pistol at me over the counter. I did the whole bit of lifting my hands in surrender, but then I saw her all-too-human eyes crinkle in a smile. She aimed the gun at the ceiling and cocked a hip as she examined me.

"You're always much more attractive as a woman."

"Matter of opinion."

"Hm. Walk with me?"

I closed the shop and took her arm - out of propriety, of course - and we walked together. She was tired, thinking of leaving the game. I told her that I was in the same boat. I'd lost my _raison d'etre_ , hence the small shop on a quiet London street. I only had one more regeneration in me, and I was looking forward to it. Other Time Lords found ways around the restrictions but I had never thought I'd cling to life. I had fulfilled my mission and now I could just sit back and enjoy the rest of my existence until the time came to see what came next.

We stood at the Thames, her arm around my elbow.

"Would you like me to kill you?"

I considered it. "No. I'd rather it happen naturally. Would you like me to kill you?"

"No." She sighed heavily. "Some nemesis you turned out to be."

I laughed. "You're one to talk. Come on. There's someone you should meet." 

The girl's name was Jenny, like my long-lost love, and I explained the situation to her. Jenny assured me that her mistress - a Silurian named Vastra - would welcome to houseguest. Vastra and Tryckea would either become fast friends or they would destroy each other. Better Vastra than me. I kissed Tryckea on the cheek and thanked her for the peril. She stroked my cheek with her thumb and told me I'd actually been a very good nemesis. I tipped my bowler hat to the women and returned to my shop.

I left London in 1900. I traveled for a few decades, comparing the literature of different species. Humans had a good showing, but the best writing came from the Crous sector. Where a human book could weigh in at a thousand pages, a Crous book could be four sentences long. The emotional power of those four sentences could fill a lexicon of human writing. I wept at the tragedy of Casav'n, and it consisted only of one letter: g.

Okay. I admit, it loses something in the translation. 

I died young, for a Time Lord. My Twelfth had a normal human life span of eighty years. I returned to Earth a few decades after my departure and discovered my young lover had indeed gotten a few of his books published. I bought first editions of them all, including _The Impossible Shop_ series. It seemed the shop was a covert government experiment, and its proprietor an ingenious spy who "may have been more than human." I was a wizard, according to the fourth book's revelations. He was close. 

I went to the very beginning of the first Library and met the person who created the very idea of a storehouse for books. With my gentle persuasion, he changed the meaning of the word. It had once meant 'vault' or 'storehouse.' Now it was a place where knowledge was to be freely shared with anyone who hungered for it. My gift to the universe. If the Doctor could make his name mean 'healer,' then why couldn't I change things for the better as well?

My Twelfth body died in Alexandria helping to construct the first library on Earth. When I died, I savored my final regeneration. I held onto that magnificent light for as long as I could, reluctant to let it go knowing I would never feel it again. It washed over me, through me, and then there I was... and here I am.

Once more, and in finality, a woman. Black hair, a mouth that is perhaps too wide and turns oddly downward when I smile, and a gap between my front teeth. My eyes are small and black. I look to be in my thirties, but I feel old. Oh, I feel so old. I'm writing this as I sit in front of thick-glass windows, looking out over a snowy plain. I can see mountains in the distance, but the foothills are blocked by the thick evergreen trees. I'm wearing a sweater and white trousers, barefoot despite the cold. I've been writing slowly, resting my chin in my hand to watch the fat flakes melt into the glass while I think about my long life. I have a mint julep, because one can never have enough of that drink no matter how long you live. 

I see myself, tall and thin wearing sweaters and dresses that sway around my legs like upturned tulips, my hair gathered in twin buns at the base of my skull, trotting down the street in gold-rimmed eyeglasses as I search for the first books I would take back to the Library.

I see myself in a tuxedo and leather, balancing on the domes of Dalek heads as I grab for the bottom rung of a ladder that's hanging _just out of reach_.

I'm a dark-skinned warrior woman. I'm a bald black man with a dangerous smile. I'm a naked goddess, a jester in need of a shave, a flat-faced man with wide eyes who would be tortured to death for the crime of reading.

I'm a dark woman who wore her burns like a hairshirt and I'm the man who loved her. I'm a busty redhead with an eye for vengeance (and damn it, I still miss those tits as I touch the gentle hills of my present chest). I'm a dashing man with a bowler hat, cane and muttonchops.

And now, and at last, I am me. Having spent my entire long life gathering books, I realized that there was something I'd never tried before. Writing. I could write! I could create rather than just stealing and storing. So that's what I'm doing. I'll spend my last life putting pen to paper, talking about... well, myself I suppose. I've only scratched the surface of my adventures. I haven't even mentioned poor Fred and Amelia and my little inadvertent rescue. And of course fencing with Vastra... 

Maybe one day I'll write some of them. I've already told you so much about who I am and how I've come to be in this little cabin, but there is still so much more to tell. And when I'm finished, I'll leave the book here on the table in plain view of the window. Just in case another Bookkeeper comes along and wishes to abscond with it.

They have my blessing.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to see my cast list of who plays the Bookkeeper's different regenerations, along with the initial "Things You May Not Know" about the character (it contains spoilers for this story!) you can find it on my journal: http://geonncannon.livejournal.com/1626938.html
> 
> Further stories featuring the Bookkeeper:  
> * http://archiveofourown.org/works/507505 - The Journals of Flathener Sosas (First)  
> * http://archiveofourown.org/works/525841 - The Angel's Kiss (Five, Amy/Rory)  
> * http://archiveofourown.org/works/565902 - ...And I Can't See the Water (Nine, Helena G Wells)


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